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Immigration undergoes a sea change
Friday, October 7th, 2011
Oct. 06, 2011
“We had the globalization of trade, we had the globalization of capital, and now we have the globalization of talent.”… “Increasingly, immigrants who live elsewhere are being viewed as assets… This is a paradigm shift… The notion of brain drain is ridiculed – instead, it is ‘brain circulation.’ The notion is that people can return as tourists, that people can be ambassadors for their home countries, that people can serve as business agents.”
Tags: economy, globalization, immigration, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Supervised injection sites: Ideology comes with big blinkers
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
Oct. 05, 2011
The exercise of ministerial discretion, the court said, must rest on “evidence” and the “principles of fundamental justice.”… “On the facts as found here, there can be only one response: to grant the exemption.” These words are about as blunt as a court can use toward a government whose view of evidence is “arbitrary” and in whose hands decisions based on rights would be “risked.”
Tags: crime prevention, Health, ideology, rights
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Addicts deserve treatment too
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Sep. 30, 2011
Sometimes, it falls to the courts to use the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to shield a powerless group from arbitrary state action. Heroin and crack addicts have no political constituency. But their lives have value, too… Why, then, was this a case to stand up to government? Why was Ottawa’s attempt to close Insite not a legitimate choice? Because the federal government was fighting illegal drugs on the backs of the most desperately ill people in our society, in a way that was bound to kill many of them.
Tags: Health, ideology, mental Health, rights, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Despite Insite victory, Canada’s drug strategy is deeply flawed
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Oct. 03, 2011
A comprehensive drug strategy has four pillars: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. The court has shored up one of those pillars, harm reduction. The government has embraced one other, enforcement. The other two key elements, prevention and treatment, have been starved of funds, leaving us with a teetering response to one of society’s biggest public-health challenges – drug misuse and addiction.
Tags: budget, crime prevention, Health, ideology, mental Health
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Today, 10 Canadians will kill themselves
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Oct. 04, 2011
Today, 10 Canadians will take their own lives, a per capita rate three times that of the United States’, largely due to the staggering number of suicides among aboriginal Canadians. In fact, suicide is the leading cause of death in men ages 25 to 29 and 40 to 44, women ages 30 to 34, and the second cause of death among adolescents… it affects adolescents struggling with sexual identity… it touches those in our armed forces, our police and firefighters, and… it deeply affects seniors as they struggle with the difficulties of growing old.
Tags: mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Binnie’s wise words on unclogging courts
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
Sep. 28, 2011
Murder trials that once took five to seven days now take five to seven months to complete, and sometimes even last for years… Civil trials have doubled in length over 10 years, to 25.7 hours on average (she cited Vancouver figures). “As the delay increases, swift, predictable justice, which is the most powerful deterrent of crime, vanishes.”
Tags: participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
A four-part action plan in the battle against teen suicide
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011
ACCESSIBILITY The number one challenge is getting timely help… PREVENTION … you need to identify those at risk. Many people, especially the young, keep their torment secret… INTERVENTION … “hotlines aren’t enough… They just help direct people to help. The help has to be there.” … AFTERCARE … one of the more neglected ways to prevent suicide is follow-up care for friends and family…
Tags: budget, mental Health, standard of living, youth
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Scary are the Tory measures to combat crime
Saturday, September 24th, 2011
Sep. 24, 2011
Canada is about to adopt policies whose failures are well understood in the U.S. and whose costs will be large but remain unknown. No wonder the government admits its policies are not based on “the latest statistics,” but on another order of analysis – namely, raw politics. The Harper government has this weird contempt for solid evidence… Sloganeering prevailed, as in “tough on crime,” despite the evidence that most of the proposed measures wouldn’t work or had proved to be counterproductive elsewhere.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Canadian teens ambivalent about gender equality
Saturday, September 24th, 2011
Sep. 22, 2011
While 90 per cent of Canadian youth said they agree gender equality is good for both men and women, nearly 45 per cent agree that “to be a man you need to be tough.”… The survey also revealed that 31 per cent of Canadian boys think a woman’s most important role is to take care of her home and cook for the family… The report of the “Because I am a girl” campaign focuses this year on young men, regarding them as part of the solution to eradicating poverty and attaining female empowerment. “Gender equality isn’t just about girls. It’s about girls and boys…”
Posted in Equality Debates | 1 Comment »
McGuinty shows off his poetry chops at mental health event
Saturday, September 24th, 2011
September 23, 2011
Mr. McGuinty focused his remarks on youth, noting that 70 per cent of mental issues begin in childhood. His party is pledging $257-million over next three years to help Ontario children and youth, he said. The money is aimed at providing faster access to services, put mental health workers in schools, allow for video counselling for rural children and help for aboriginal kids… The expansion will house inpatient beds for schizophrenia, a community support and research and clinical programs.
Tags: mental Health, youth
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
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